Child Soldiers Global Report 2008 - Sierra Leone

Population: 5.5 million (2.7 million under 18)
Government Armed Forces: 10,500
Compulsary Recruitment Age: no conscription
Voluntary Recruitment Age: 18
Voting Age: 18
Optional Protocol: ratified 15 May 2002
Other Treaties: GC AP I, GC AP II, CRC, ACRWC, ICC

There were no reports of under-18s in the armed forces. Children were allegedly recruited in Sierra Leone by Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) to fight in Liberia in July 2005. The trial of the former Liberian president, Charles Taylor, for crimes against humanity, war crimes and other serious violations of international law committed in Sierra Leone, including the recruitment and use in hostilities of child soldiers under the age of 15, began in June 2007 before the Special Court for Sierra Leone. The same month the Special Court convicted three former commanders of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) of recruitment and use in hostilities of children under 15; in August it convicted a leader of the pro-government Civil Defence Forces (CDF) of the same charge.

Context:

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which had been established under the 1999 Lomé Peace Agreement, published its report in October 2004. The UN Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) completed its peacekeeping mandate in December 2005. It was succeeded by the United Nations Integrated Office for Sierra Leone (UNIOSIL), established by UN Security Council Resolution 1620, which was mandated to assist Sierra Leone in consolidating peace and human rights, building capacity of state institutions, and strengthening the rule of law and the security sector.

In August 2007 the All People's Congress (APC) won parliamentary elections. In September Ernest Bai Korom, representing the APC, was elected president, replacing Ahmad Tejan Kabbah.

The conflict in Sierra Leone, which began in 1991, was officially declared over in January 2002 with completed disarmament and demobilization of armed groups.¹ The Liberian conflicts of 1990-7 and 2000-3, and the conflict in Côte d'Ivoire since 2002, were intricately linked, with operations across borders, including in Guinea, which bordered all three countries, and a complex web of governments and armed groups providing support to factions in neighbouring countries.² A migrant population of thousands of young fighters, including child soldiers, crossing the borders between Liberia, Guinea, Sierra Leone and Côte d'Ivoire, saw conflict mainly as an economic opportunity. Many had first been forcibly recruited as children in one conflict, then willingly crossed borders to take up arms in another, often with a different armed group. A 2005 study by Human Rights Watch found that most had been motivated by the promises of financial gain, and many could not articulate the political objective of the group they fought with. The risk of re-recruitment was exacerbated by high rates of youth unemployment and corruption and deficiencies in the implementation of disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) programs.³ An August 2006 report by the UN Office for West Africa (UNOWA) noted that high levels of unemployment, particularly youth unemployment, across west Africa posed a risk to stability in the region. This was reiterated in a 2007 report by the UN Secretary-General which highlighted also the importance of reform of the security sector in countries in the region as a means of addressing it.⁴

In May 2007 the Secretary-General assessed the security situation in Sierra Leone as stable but fragile, with risks to stability from the high rate of youth unemployment, concerns over the accountability of the authorities, the weakness of the justice system and the lack of improvement in general living standards.⁵ A June 2007 UN report on conditions in prisons indicated that failure to protect prisoners' rights could also threaten the country's stability.⁶

Sierra Leone was ranked the least-developed country in the world by the UN Development Programme (UNDP) 2007-8 Human Development Index, based on 2005 data.⁷

The Child Rights Act, passed in June 2007, introduced into domestic law the international definition of a child as any person under the age of 18 and other provisions of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child.⁸ It included (Section 28) a prohibition on the use of land mines and other weapons declared by international instruments to be adverse to children.

Government:

National recruitment legislation and practice

The Sierra Leone government affirmed in 2006 in its second report to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child that, as stated in its declaration on ratifying the Optional Protocol, the age of recruitment into the armed forces had been raised from 17.5 to 18 years. The 2007 Child Rights Act enacted this into law, stipulating that the minimum age of recruitment into the armed forces was 18 (Section 28), and amending the Sierra Leone Armed Forces Act of 1961 to this effect.

In its declaration on ratifying the Optional Protocol, Sierra Leone had stated that there was no compulsory recruitment into the armed forces and that recruitment was exclusively on a voluntary basis.⁹

Armed Groups:

Reports of recruitment of children for use in neighbouring countries

There were reports that, in 2005, children in Sierra Leone were being recruited with a view to fighting in Liberia. In July near Kaliahun in eastern Sierra Leone men from Liberia were aiming to recruit children for the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) and in August Liberian LURD sympathizers were seeking to recruit children allegedly to work in diamond mines in Liberia as a cover for a recruitment strategy.¹⁰ In August 2005 two boys claimed that they had escaped from a recruitment camp in Liberia.¹¹ In September 2005, cases of children who went to Liberia to sell goods but never came back were also documented in the Kaliahun district.¹²

Disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR):

The Lomé Peace Agreement had explicitly provided that the special needs of children should be addressed in the disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) process. According to the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, there were no accurate statistics for the number of children associated with the fighting forces during the conflict. Estimates by different organizations including UNICEF, UNAMSIL, and local agencies ranged from 5,000 to 10,000 depending on the criteria used.¹³ The national body responsible for the DDR program, the National Committee for Demobilisation, Disarmament and Reintegration (NCDRR) confirmed to the Commission that more than 6,774 children entered the DDR program. Of these, 3,710 had been with the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), 2,026 with the pro-government Civil Defence Forces (CDF), 471 with the Sierra Leone Army and 427 with the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC); 144 were with other factions or non-affiliated.¹⁴

It was estimated that about 30 per cent of child soldiers in the conflict were girls, but only 8 per cent (513) of the former child soldiers in the DDR program were female. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission identified this failure to address the needs of girl soldiers as the most glaring problem in the DDR program, and in contravention of UN Security Council Resolution 1314 of August 2000 on children and armed conflict, which called for special attention to be given to the needs of girls in the wake of conflict, including in DDR programs. Gender had been given scant regard in the planning of the DDR program, which did not take into account the gender-specific roles played by girls and the complexity of their situations. One reason for the lack of participation of girls in the DDR program was that most of them had been considered as camp followers and not as combatants in their own right. In fact, they had played many roles in the conflict, as porters, fighters and "bush wives" held in sexual slavery by their captors. Some commanders to whom the girls had been attached as "bush wives" refused to allow them to participate in the DDR program. Other girls refused to participate for fear of stigmatization.¹⁵

UNICEF set up the "Girls Left Behind Project" to provide assistance to such girls. In the Kono, Bombali and Port Loko districts where the project was operated by UNICEF's non-governmental organization (NGO) partners, by the time it closed in February 2005 over 1,000 girls had been identified who had not gone through the DDR process, and 714 girls had been provided with services. Some similar projects were set up by NGOs.¹⁶ One local NGO continued to work with girls without focusing exclusively on girls formerly associated with the fighting forces, but involving other girls affected by the conflict, including commercial sex workers.¹⁷

Demobilized children under 15 were sent to Interim Care Centres (ICCs) under the care of UNICEF and child protection agencies, after which they were reunited with their families or went to foster families, and entered education projects. Those aged 15-17 could go into NCDRR training and employment programs for up to nine months, at the end of which they received a start-up kit. However, in many cases they were unable to make effective use of their training because of the weakness of the economy, and start-up kits on their own were not enough to start a sustainable business. To that extent the DDR program had not taken economic realities into account and had given insufficient consideration to sustainability.¹⁸ The levels of economic deprivation reportedly were a factor in some Sierra Leone former combatants, including former child soldiers, returning to fighting in Liberia and Côte d'Ivoire.¹⁹

Developments:

The economic exploitation of children, including in diamond mining, had been especially high during the conflict. Levels of child labour recorded by UNICEF increased between 2003 and 2005.²⁰ In its second periodic report to the Committee on the Rights of the Child the government indicated that the lack of proper and effective monitoring and capacity in the relevant ministry might have led indirectly to the increase in child labour. The 2007 Child Rights Act criminalized the use of children, especially young children, in hazardous labour and other forms of economic and sexual exploitation of children, and the 2005 Anti-human Trafficking Act (2005) contained provisions for the prevention of child labour and trafficking.²¹

At a February 2007 ministerial meeting in Paris, Sierra Leone and 58 other states endorsed the Paris Commitments to protect children from unlawful recruitment or use by armed forces or armed groups and the Paris Principles and guidelines on children associated with armed forces or armed groups. The documents reaffirmed international standards and operational principles for protecting and assisting child soldiers and followed a wide-ranging global consultation jointly sponsored by the French government and UNICEF.

Truth and Reconciliation Commission

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission published its final report in October 2004. It was mandated to give special attention to the experiences of children who, at the onset of the conflict in 1991, had comprised half the population. It took steps to reach out to children to ensure that their voices would be heard and published a child-friendly version of its report. A chapter of its final report focused on children and examined the continuing impact of the conflict on children.

All sides had recruited children, who were the main victims of forced recruitment. By 1998 about 25 per cent of the fighting forces were under 18. The disproportionate targeting for recruitment of boys aged 10-14 led the Commission to conclude that the armed groups deliberately sought to enlist them. Over 50 percent of people who suffered forced recruitment were abducted at the age of 15 or younger, and over 28 per cent at the age of 12 or younger.

The RUF had been the first to enlist children and were responsible for the highest number of child recruitments recorded. The government side had started recruiting children in 1991-2 under President Momoh, who encouraged chiefs and community leaders to organize the civilian population into local vigilante groups to augment the Sierra Leone Army (SLA). The main recruitment of children into the army took place during the National Provisional Ruling Council (NPRC) government when proper recruitment procedures were not followed in view of the emergency situation and the need to increase the number of soldiers. Some children were recruited illegally and given the roll number of soldiers who had been killed, while the salaries and benefits due to the dead soldiers were embezzled by senior officers and administrators for whom the conflict had become profitable business.

The Commission noted the dual identities of children as victims and perpetrators. The violence of conflict had deadened their senses, already impaired by drug abuse. Peer pressure and the need for a sense of belonging led them to conform, and they often had to become ruthless in order to survive.

Sexual violence was systematic, but the Commission could not establish conclusive figures. Most girls abducted by the RUF and AFRC were compelled to be available to their captors for sex, resulting in the "bush wife" phenomenon of sexual slavery. The group targeted for sexual slavery was girls and women aged 10-25; 50 per cent of them were 15 or under, and 25 per cent were 12 or under. Of the rape victims 25 per cent were 13 or younger.

Many children had been mutilated with the name of the armed group who had captured them branded or carved on their bodies to prevent them escaping. These scars added to the fear of stigmatization after the conflict. UNICEF established a project to provide plastic surgery to a number of children to remove or disguise their scars.

Many children were not reunited with their families after the conflict. Some had been so young when abducted that they did not remember who their families were. Others had been rejected by their families, or the fear of stigma and rejection led them to refuse to go back to their communities. Girls in particular faced stigma and rejection for having become "bush wives" or sexual slaves. In cases where they had babies the babies had often been rejected too.

All the armed factions pursued a policy of forcibly administering drugs to children to loosen their inhibitions and to spur them to violence. In the years after the conflict there was a high number of young people addicted to drugs, with attendant psychiatric and other health problems.

These factors, together with the deficiencies in the DDR program, including the failure to include girls and young women, had led to a dramatic rise in the number of street children after the conflict, as well as a growth in the number of young girls engaged in prostitution as a means of survival.²²

Special Court for Sierra Leone

The Special Court for Sierra Leone, created by the government and the UN in January 2002, was mandated to try those "bearing the greatest responsibility" for crimes against humanity, war crimes and other serious violations of international law during the conflict in Sierra Leone. In 2002 it was confirmed that children would not be indicted by the Court.²³ The Court's prosecutors viewed all children as victims as well as perpetrators, and thus felt individual children could not be been seen as bearing greatest responsibility.²⁴

By June 2007, eight people were on trial in the Special Court in Freetown, for crimes which included the recruitment and use of children under 15. They were three former AFRC leaders, two former CDF leaders, and three former RUF leaders. Two others had been indicted by the Court: the leader of the RUF, Foday Sankoh, who had died in custody in 2003, and the leader of the CDF, Hinga Norman, who died in February 2007.²⁵ In March 2006 the Nigerian authorities apprehended Charles Taylor, former president of Liberia, who was transferred to the authority of the Court where he was charged with war crimes, crimes against humanity and other serious violations of international humanitarian law, including the use of child soldiers during his alleged involvement in the Sierra Leone conflict supporting the RUF.²⁶ In June, in order to protect stability in Liberia and the sub-region, which might be disrupted if he were to be put on trial in west Africa, he was transferred to The Hague to be tried by a trial chamber of the Special Court.²⁷ He first appeared before the Special Court in The Hague on 4 June 2007. His trial was adjourned until January 2008 to allow time for his lawyers to prepare for trial.²⁸

The first verdict by the Special Court was announced on 20 June 2007 in the case of Alex Tamba Brima, Brima Bazzy Kamara and Santigie Borbor Kanu. These three former commanders of the AFRC were found guilty on 11 out of 14 charges, including the recruitment of children under the age of 15 and their active use in hostilities.²⁹ The judgment marked the first time that an international criminal tribunal found individuals guilty of recruitment and use of children as soldiers. These convictions were welcomed by human rights NGOs as a historic precedent, showing that the recruitment of child soldiers was considered to be among the most serious of crimes and that those involved could and would be brought to justice.³⁰ The three were sentenced to between 45 and 50 years' imprisonment, covering all counts on which they were found guilty.³¹

On 2 August 2007 the Court announced its verdicts in the cases of two CDF leaders. Moinina Fofana was convicted on four counts of the eight-count indictment, but found not guilty of the charge of conscripting or enlisting children under the age of 15 into armed forces or groups or using them to participate actively in hostilities. Allieu Kondewa was found guilty on this charge, along with four other charges. He was sentenced on 9 October 2007 to seven years' imprisonment for this specific charge. The Court concluded that he had initiated children as young as 11 into the "Avondo Society", a group of Kamajors ("hunters", members of the CDF). Both individuals were to serve their sentences concurrently, which meant that Moinina Fofana would serve a total of six years and Allieu Kondewa would serve eight years.³²

1 Amnesty International Report 2003.

2 See entries on Côte d'Ivoire, Guinea and Liberia in this volume.

3 See Human Rights Watch (HRW), Youth, Poverty and Blood: The Lethal Legacy of West Africa's Regional Warriors, March 2005; Report of the UN Secretary-General on ways to combat subregional and cross-border problems in West Africa, UN Doc. S/2004/200, 12 March 2004; Report of the Secretary-General on inter-mission cooperation and possible cross-border operations between the UN Mission in Sierra Leone, the UN Mission in Liberia, and the UN Operation in Côte d'Ivoire, UN Doc. S/2005/135, 2 March 2005.

4 Youth Unemployment and Regional Insecurity in West Africa, 2nd edn, UN Office for West Africa (UNOWA), August 2006, www.un.org/unowa; Report of the Secretary-General on cross-border issues in West Africa, UN Doc. S/2007/143, 13 March 2007.

5 Fourth report of the Secretary-General on the United Nations Integrated Office in Sierra Leone, UN Doc. S/2007/257, 7 May 2007.

6 "Sierra Leone prisons threaten peace", BBC News, 22 June 2007. See also UN Integrated Office in Sierra Leone (UNIOSIL), "Presentation of a report 'Behind the walls – an inventory and assessment of prisons in Sierra Leone' – statement by the ERSG Victor Angelo on 21 June 2007", press release, UNIOSIL/PIO PR 50, www.uniosil.org.

7 UN Development Programme (UNDP), 2007/2008 Human Development Index rankings, http://hdr.undp.org.

8 UNICEF, "Sierra Leone approves the National Child Rights Bill", press release, 7 June 2007.

9 Declaration on accession to the Optional Protocol, www2.ohchr.org.

10 Coalition interview with confidential sources, Freetown, November 2005, cited in Child Soldiers Coalition, Child Soldiers and Disarmament, Demobilization, Rehabilitation and Reintegration in West Africa, November 2006.

11 Report submitted to UNICEF by a child protection agency in Sierra Leone, 18 August 2005, cited in Child Soldiers Coalition, above note 10.

12 Coalition meeting with a child protection agency, Freetown, October 2005, cited in Child Soldiers Coalition, above note 10.

13 Amnesty International (AI) estimated in 2000 that by then more than 10,000 children had been associated with the fighting forces – see Sierra Leone: childhood – a casualty of conflict (AI Index AFR 51/69/00), 31 August 2000.

14 "Children and the armed conflict in Sierra Leone", Chapter 4 of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Sierra Leone, Vol. 3b, October 2004.

15 Ibid. See also Susan McKay and Dyan Mazurana, Where Are the Girls? Girls in Fighting Forces in Northern Uganda, Sierra Leone and Mozambique: Their Lives during and after War, International Center for Human Rights and Democratic Development, 2004, www.ichrdd.ca.

16 John Williamson, Reintegration of Child Soldiers in Sierra Leone, USAID report, 2005, http://pdf.usaid.gov.

17 Coalition interview with Caritas Makeni official, Makeni, December 2005.

18 Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Sierra Leone, above note 14.

19 HRW, above note 3.

20 UNICEF, State of the World's Children 2005 and 2007. The 2005 report, based on figures up to 2003, indicated that the child labour rate for those aged 5-14 was 57 per cent; the 2007 report, based on figures up to 2005, indicated that the child labour rate was 59 per cent.

21 Second periodic report of Sierra Leone to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, UN Doc. CRC/C/SLE/2, 8 September 2006.

22 Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Sierra Leone, above note 14.

23 Special Court for Sierra Leone, "Special Court prosecutor says he will not prosecute children", press release, 2 November 2002, www.sc-sl.org.

24 Coalition interview with chief of prosecutions of Special Court for Sierra Leone, Freetown, December 2006.

25 Special Court for Sierra Leone, www.sc-sl.org.

26 Eleventh progress report of the Secretary-General on the UN Mission in Liberia, UN Doc. S/2006/376, 9 June 2006; Special Court for Sierra Leone, Summary of charges against Charles Taylor, www.sc-sl.org.

27 Twelfth progress report of the Secretary-General on the UN Mission in Liberia, UN Doc. S/2006/743, 12 September 2006; Report of the Secretary-General on children and armed conflict, UN Doc. A/61/529-S/2006/826, 26 October 2006.

28 "Taylor trial delayed until 2008", BBC News, 20 August 2007.

29 Brima, Kamara and Kanu, Special Court for Sierra Leone, Trial Chamber II, Judgment, 20 June 2007.

30 Coalition, "Child Soldiers Coalition welcomes verdicts against child recruiters in Sierra Leone", press release, 20 June 2007.

31 Special Court for Sierra Leone, sentencing judgment, SCSL-04-16-T, 19 July 2007.

32 Special Court for Sierra Leone, sentencing judgment, SCSL-04-14-T, 9 October 2007.